Lola and Bilidikid
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Lola and Bilidikid Dir: E. Kutlug Ataman, Germany, 1999 A review by Filez Cicek, Indiana University, USA Scholars often describe the guest worker/Turkish immigrant in Germany as a mute man/woman, who is unable or not allowed to integrate. I propose that his/her muteness in some cases preceded their Diasporic journey and has been accentuated since he/she became an immigrant. Further, I will argue that until recently, contemporary Turkish-German Cinema has perpetuated this muteness rather than giving a voice to the realities of the immigrant men and women. This representation of muteness has its roots in the Kemalist reforms started in 1923, whereby the government tried to force the filmmakers to create films that would reflect the idea of a "new Turk" which was supposed to end the image of the "backward Ottoman". This concept ignored the actual realities of the average both male and female Turkish citizen, who remained basically unchanged. It was this population that made up the majority of the immigrants who went to Germany. I will argue that in Germany, the government policy of "affirmative action", which sought to give voice to the mute immigrant, instead "produced well-meaning projects encouraging multi-culturalism that, however often result in the construction of binary opposition between Turkish Culture and German Culture." Thus the immigrant, who was struck mute in his/her homeland, was further silenced by the good intentions of his/her host country. The films, produced with money from the German government, overemphasized the immigrant's victim status and were unable to go beyond the existing stereotype of the "Muslim Turk from the East" complete with the image of the oppressing male and the oppressed female. Lost was the depiction of the immigrant as a modern worker who attempts to adapt to the exigencies of a modern capitalist society and becomes integral part of German culture and economy in the process. Kevin Robins and Asu Aksoy argue that the western modernity that was introduced after WWI by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the new Turkish Republic, created a distance between the average Turkish citizen and the State. The new Turkish Republic defined its model "new Turk" by their difference from the Ottoman culture because the Ottoman experience was regarded as non-Turkish and backwards. Therefore the Kemalist reforms abolished the caliphate, religious brotherhoods, attire, language, calendar and so on. Thus began the "tradition of discontinuity with the past which culminated in a state of amnesia imbued in the psyche of the 'new Turks'" Instead, they looked towards the West, which represented modernity. Yet most of the Turks, especially those who lived in countryside, continued to live according to their folk Islamic traditions as they did for centuries. Even the six centuries of Ottoman rule, which was heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic cultures and languages, was not enough to change that reality. The Kemalist reform did not either. But what Kemalist reforms did was to effectively create a gap between its average citizen and the elitist state. The state-run radio, television and later cinema, all promoted the ideal New Turkish citizen as a reality, creating an ongoing conflict between what he/she should be and what he/she is. In a sense, the entire country was forced to play a game of pretending to be western and modern. In doing so, they silenced any elements that did not go along with that image and ideal, thus creating a whole new mute population alongside the elite Republicans. The majority of those immigrants, who journeyed to Germany for better life, were the mute citizens of Turkey coming from the countryside to escape their economic hardship. When in Germany, they came face to face with the same silencing dilemma that they experienced in Turkey, but in a much larger scale. If they were not able to or willing to adapt to the new Turkish citizen image in their homeland, how and why were they going to adapt to their new German identity? In Turkey, the government by implementing various censorship rules tried to force the filmmakers to create films that reflected the idea of "new Turk" as a reality, not giving voice to actual realities of its average Turkish citizen. In Germany a government policy, an American type of affirmative action, sought to give voice to the mute immigrant. This policy as Deniz Gokturk describes "produced well-meaning projects encouraging multi-culturalism that, however often result in the construction of binary opposition between Turkish Culture and German Culture." She also states: "the postulate of cultural difference, though it purports to be liberating, has obstructed the perception of the cross-cultural exchanges that in fact already exist, and often hindered dialogue instead of facilitating it." It is hard to disagree with Gokturk: most of the Turkish-German films from Germany 40squaremeters to Almanya Aci Vatan that were produced over three decades followed the blueprint of Turkish stereotypes regarding such subjects as rape, violence, revenge, prison, hospital, virtue, honour, honour killings, women in domestic space, masculinity in crisis and so on. While such issues do exist in Turkish-German daily life as in other cultures, continual portrayal of pitiful noble victim in these films did little to better the image of the mute Turkish immigrant. On the contrary, it cemented that image and in the process gave the average German audience an outlet to temporarily feel sympathy for him/her but nothing further. In fact it silenced him/her in much the same way Turkish modernism did, portraying his/her traditional values backwards, putting him in an inescapable negative cultural box, without reflecting the greys in between the binary cultural experiences which exist on a daily basis. But does cinema have such responsibility? Since it is one of the most powerful and influential media outlets in global popular culture, one could argue that cinema has a responsibility to be honest about the reality of the time, people and places they attempt to portray. Cinema could help create a space, perhaps that third space, as Homi Babaha would put it, where an immigrant exists daily, not as a two-dimensional cartoon character of him/herself but as real individual. In this regard, Kutlug Ataman's film Lola and Bilikid (1999) serves as the first Turkish-German film that embodies that honesty, reality, exposing the daily life of Turkish- German's immigrant in Berlin in a groundbreaking way. The irony of the film is that it mobilizes the marginal immigrants in Germany through the voices of most marginal of them all -- Turkish transvestites in Berlin -- to expose the reality of the Turkish-German community at large. Starting with Kutlug Ataman's Lola and Bilidikid, muteness of the Turkish immigrant was complicated. Such attempts were repeated in films like Short Sharp Shocked and Head-On by Fatih Akin, which are distinctly different then earlier films, such as Berlin Berlin by Sinan Cetin. However, Akin's work has competing ideals that further complicate the situation. For example, Akin's Head-On which won the Golden Bear award in Germany in 2004, is a film about two Turkish-German characters' quest for visibility, quest for third space to exist. Turkish German characters in this film are portrayed rather "raw" as some film critics put it, which is a progress considering other Turkish German films glorification of the sympathetic noble victim characters. The film is more entertaining to the general audience than Lola and Bilidikid. It has all the usual Turkish film themes of rape, murder, jealousy, and virtue, honour, hospital, jail and so on but the way in which Akin presents these themes doesn't quite deconstruct the stereotypes. Rather, he makes them grander. Also, the epilogues that are built in between scenes further accentuate Turkish culture and Turkey as the promised land. In an interview Akin sates that he wanted to create an imaginary space where his two loveable loser Turkish-German characters could escape. However, that imaginary space ends up being homeland Turkey. This idea of "Homeland-Turkey" comes to serve as a space of resistance to German subordination. The option of being able to go back to homeland is a survival skill to most Turkish Immigrants in Europe. It provides the immigrant in identity struggle with an imaginary space where he/she can negotiate his/her identity: namely identifying themselves as Germans to Turks in Turkey and as Turkish to Germans in Germany. However, that journey back to homeland-Turkey usually doesn't happen. This is problematic, since it creates a vicious cycle of a catch-22 without hope of upward mobility in either of the countries. Unlike Lola and Bilidikid, Akin's ending in Head On says to us that there is no chance of visibility for his characters in Germany other than being victims and/or criminals and offers no realistic alternative for third space of existence. This feeds into the German- media's focus on the "hyphenated" identity of the Turks, which stresses the national and religious identities at the expense of other forms of identification. Similarly in his earlier film, In July, Akin takes his four characters, both German and Turkish, to Turkey, away from the boring summer in Hamburg. But once in Turkey, they end up with partners of their own race: German girl with German boy, Turkish Girl with a Turkish boy. It is ironic that Fatih Akin, who was born and raised in Germany, and who has achieved success and visibility in Germany, sees Turkey as the Promised Land for his seemingly hopeless (victim-criminals) characters. The international success of Akin's two films, along with German media attention to "Muslim-Turkish" born actress Sibel Kekilli's past as a porn star, to a certain degree testifies to the enduring effects of Orientalism, this time internalized by Turks and aided by empathetic Germans.